IRVING, Texas – He was hockey’s answer to Charles Barkley, always candid and outspoken, bursting with more quotes than Bartlett could ever provide.

Remember how only a few years ago he created a storm of controversy with his infamous “this game [stinks]” remark, blasting the NHL’s new slow-down, defensive-oriented style? He was making a stand and he enjoyed it.

So why throughout the playoffs, most important during the media-crammed Stanley Cup Finals, when he would have center stage, has he reinvented himself into Garbo?

“I don’t have anything to say,” Brett Hull said yesterday at the Stars’ practice site, his first public comments since Game 2 when he scored two goals. “It got to a point where it didn’t matter. It’s time consuming. It’s all propaganda.”

But interviews never used to bother him. In fact, he seemed to cherish the pulpit.

So what’s changed? With his team down 3-1 going into Game 5 tonight at New Jersey, why isn’t he ripping the Devils for their hockey-ruining trap? Where’s his criticism of coach Ken Hitchcock for keeping his line away from the powerful Jason Arnott trio? How can he not be blasting his team for giving up three unanswered goals in the Game 4 loss? And why isn’t he condemning the Stars for being behind three games to one?

Where’s the old spark? Where’s the noise? Where have you gone, Brett Hull?

“All you do is get chastised by it,” he said about his history of making strong comments. “Everyone wants to hear it and then they call you a baby. More than three-fourths of the players will never back you up. They’ll come up to you in a bar or a restaurant and say, ‘I agree with what you said.’ But they’ll never say it to the media or someone who counts.”

Hull will be 36 in August and his once-thriving career is on the decline. In his 13th season, he scored a career-low 24 goals in 79 games, and only tallied nine in the final three months, when he tied his dad, Bobby, with 610 career goals.

“People who have been around the team this season have seen a frustrated athlete,” Hitchcock said.

But Hull emerged in the playoffs, gathering a team-high 10 goals and 11 assists in the first three rounds. And yet suddenly he has become mostly ineffective against the Devils, with two goals and one assist, rarely able to find space for his devastating slap shot.

Still, it’s his disappearance with the media that’s been most surprising, so perhaps there’s another reason for it.

“He’s pretty cagey,” Hitchcock said. “He wants to try and perform in a quiet manner off the ice so he doesn’t attract a lot of attention on it. That’s like a sandbagger in golf.”

But even privately Hull’s persona has changed.

“He’s been a lot more sincere, a lot less sarcastic,” Hitchcock said. “I don’t think there’s the bitterness that he had during the regular season.”

But he’s certainly not the only player being careful with what he says.

“No one wants to say anything controversial to put on the other team’s bulletin board,” he said.

That was supposed to be your job.

Where have you gone, Brett Hull?